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Book > vS 3_-„ 



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COPmiGHT DEPOSni 



Will it Pay Me to Go 
to Hi^h School? 



GIFT EDITION 



The Eleventh Printing 
The 258th Thousand 



THOS. E. SANDERS 
Racine, Wisconsin 



l?^"^'^ 
"b^ 



Copyright 1919 and 1922 
by Thos. E. Sanders 



JUL 14 1922 

©CI.A674914 



WiU It Pay Me to Go 
to Hi^K ScKool? 



A Big Ouestion 

This booklet is addressed to the 
pupils of the upper grades. It is a 
plea for better preparation. Thou- 
sands of boys and girls are asking 
themselves in all seriousness, "Will 
it pay me to go to high school?" 
Parents are asking the same about 
their children. To you it is an all- 
important question. Your future 
will be changed by the way you 
decide. When you complete the 
common school you stand at the 
fork of the road. It means much 
whether you turn to the right or to 
the left. 



WILL IT PAY ME 



Two Facts to Keep in Mind 

You must keep two facts in mind 
while deciding this question. 

1. Now is your only chance to get 
a high school education. 

If you do not go to high school now 
there is not one chance in a thousand 
that you will ever go. There are ex- 
ceptions to this rule, but the excep- 
tions are very rare. You must count 
this your first, last, and only chance 
to get a high school education. 

2. When Ustening to advice, give 
ear to those who have had a high 
school education. Those who have 
had a high school education are best 
able to judge its worth. It is rare 
indeed that a graduate of any high 
school ever expresses regret for either 
the time or the money it cost. Select 
a hundred high school graduates who 
are over twenty-five years old, and 
practically every one of them will be 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



enthusiastic over the worth of a high 
school course. Select another hun- 
dred men and women of experience 
and judgment that are more than 
twenty-five years old, but who from 
some cause did not get to go to high 
school and a big majority will express 
the keenest regret that they did not 
have the advantages of a high school 
course. 

Then select a number of young 
persons scarcely out of their teens, 
or a number of men and women who 
are practically illiterate, and many 
of them may make light of the thought 
of going to high school. They have 
never experienced the advantages of 
high school and are not intelligent 
enough to understand what they have 
missed. 

Which class of opinions should 
have most weight with you.^^ If you 
were thinking of buying an auto- 
mobile, would you listen to the ad- 



WILL IT PAY ME 



vice of a man who had never seen a 
car, owned a car, or driven a car? 
You would not. Neither would you 
take the advice of a Filipino who had 
never seen, or heard of an apple 
about going in the apple business 
either as a dealer or as an apple 
grower. Yet either of these would 
be as competent to advise you as a 
person who has never had a high 
school course would be to advise you 
about going to high school. Good 
common sense would tell you to seek 
the advice of some person who had a 
high school education rather than 
that of a person who has never had 
such advantages. 

The Demand Growing 

There was never a greater demand 
for high school graduates than at the 
present. Many firms now expect 
and demand a high school education 
for their employees. Other qualities 
being equal the high school boy will 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



win over those without such training. 
This law is as immutable as a law of 
nature. You can neither change nor 
escape it. You may deny it, you 
may rage against the justice of it, 
you may try to explain it away, but 
the stubborn fact remains that with 
equal native ability, like application 
and faithful devotion to duty, young 
people trained by a high school 
course will surpass in any under- 
taking the same number of those 
without such training. Here and 
there are exceptions, but the rule is 
true. The discipline and training of 
a high school course will give you a 
tremendous advantage in most lines 
over the person not so trained. 

A returned soldier, a friend of the 
writer, declared there was no chance 
for promotion in the army unless you 
had a high school or college education. 
He firmly beheved there was much 
injustice done because as he said, 



WILL IT PAY ME 



'* Every fellow with a high school or a 
college education became an officer 
in three months while the rest of us 
had to obey them." The poor boy 
could not understand that the train- 
ing of high school or college had in- 
creased the power of leadership many 
fold. The judgment, the self-reliance, 
the determination and often the self- 
denial that had made the boy per- 
severe and complete a high school or 
college course were the very quali- 
ties needed in an officer. This same 
young man less than ten years ago 
was boasting of how much more he 
could earn than any of his classmates. 
He actually thought they were wast- 
ing time and money in going to high 
school. No greater tribute can be 
paid to the worth of a high school or 
college course than the great num- 
ber of officers that developed from 
such men. Count up the number of 
high school graduates you know who 
were in the service a year or more 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



and then find what proportion of 
them were officers when mustered 
out. There is a reason foi; it. Four 
years of training bore fruit in leader- 
ship. 

High School Influence is Good 

A high school course will bring out 
and develop your best quaHties and 
your greatest strength. It will broad- 
en your sympathies, sharpen your 
intellect, extend your mental horizon, 
and multiply your capabilities. Once 
in a while you will hear some one 
telling how the high school spoiled 
this or that young man. The truth 
is he was spoiled in spite of the high 
school instead of because of it. Lax 
home discipline, too much money, 
too much leisure, too many outside 
dissipations, too little high school 
study, too much high school loafing: 
these are the things that ruined him. 
He went to the bad, not because he 
went to high school but because he 



WILL IT PAY ME 



was in the high school physically and 
not mentally. His interest never 
reached high school. All his thoughts 
and impulses were at cross purposes 
with the high school. His purpose was 
not to get his lessons, but to criticise, 
find fault, and make objections. Too 
often his parents were willing listen- 
ers to these same petty complaints. 
Too often they fanned this discon- 
tent until the thoughtful person sees 
readily why the boy failed in high 
school. 

People emphasize the failure of 
high school graduates because they 
are not common. It is the strange 
and unusual that attracts attention. 
Because a few persons with high 
school training fall by the wayside, 
people speak often of these examples. 
They forget that the same high 
school at the time was both hfe- 
saver and life-giver to ten times as 
many others. They point to the one 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



failure in a hundred, the only knotty 
apple on the whole tree, and exclaim, 
"that is what the high school does!" 
It is like unto a drunken husband 
who beats his wife and gets a three- 
column writeup and his picture on 
the front page of the daily, while ten 
thousand worthy husbands go un- 
mentioned. Let one pupil out of a 
high school go wrong and unthinking 
croakers for a decade will point it 
out as what will surely happen to 
you should you ever go to high school. 
There is little more logic in it than to 
argue because one boy becomes a 
thief while working in a certain 
store, that every other boy who goes 
to that store to work will become a 
thief. 

It Is Thinking Power 
that|Counts 

Your fund of information gleaned 
from a high school course may be 
worth much to you, but the think- 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



ing power is a far greater asset. The 
thinking power gained by unravel- 
ing an involved Latin sentence twen- 
ty years later, helps you to read 
your abstract of land title correctly. 
The power you gain by a daily 
wrestle with quadratic equations 
may make it possible for you later 
to puncture quickly the fake project 
of the professional promoter. The 
facts as well as the mental power 
gained in a study of Ancient Rome 
will enable you to find the flaws in 
the half baked political curealls ped- 
dled about as a panacea for all our 
national ills. The knowledge of sim- 
ple chemical reactions learned in the 
high school laboratory may make 
you a better cook. The power and 
skill gained poring over the theorems 
of solid geometry may come back a 
decade later to make you a more 
successful architect. 

It is the thinking power generated 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



in the high school, rather than the 
facts learned, that enables the high 
school graduate to outrun others in 
the attainments of hfe. This think- 
ing power is a charged battery ready 
to be tapped for any purpose later 
in life. After a good high school 
course you will meet and master new 
processes or new conditions with far 
less loss of time and with much 
greater skill than you can ever do 
without such training. Time and 
effort spent in building up your res- 
ervoirs of thought power pay golden 
dividends compounded at frequent 
intervals in later life. 

The Critic's Motive 

Occasionally some self-made, short- 
sighted business man may really think 
a high school education harmful. If 
you analyze this man, you are apt to 
find he made a money success by a 
combination of dogged tenacity, good 
luck, and rigid economy. The world 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



is of less importance to him than his 
own business. He wants a cheap boy 
for a cheap job. He wants his ashes 
hauled for fifty cents a load. The 
boy who has never thought beyond 
hauling ashes to the dump will con- 
tinue to do unskilled work at a small 
price. The high school graduate 
may not seek such jobs readily. He 
can haul ashes with more skill and 
less labor perhaps than the other, 
but he does not care to take it up as 
a life job. When you find this hard- 
headed business man arguing against 
the high school education you will 
find in nearly every case he wants 
his rough labor done at a small price, 
or else he has his own peculiar way of 
doing things and wants the untrained 
boy that he may train him in his 
own methods. To such a man, the 
boy taught to copy and to follow 
blindly is the best educated. You 
should seek the motive of the em- 
ployer who condemns too vigor- 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



ously the high school and its gradu- 
ates. 

A Pleasant Four Years 

Four years in high school will be 
an oasis of pleasure in your life. It 
covers the period of most enthusiasm. 
It is the dawn of young manhood 
and young womanhood. New and 
greater interests are aroused. New 
hopes and ambitions are born. Friend- 
ships made here last through life. 
Sordid things are forgotten. Every 
American boy and girl should have 
this four-year inherent birthright 
before assuming the weightier re- 
sponsibilities of life. This should 
become an American standard. Life 
at best will be serious enough later. 
Often the things condemned as being 
utterly unpractical turn out to be the 
most practical things of all. Life at 
the forge or in the shop will grow 
monotonous at best. The gem of 
literature, the appreciation of music, 
the touch of art hanging in memory 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



that reKeves the grind of the daily 
task may be the most precious thing 
learned in early life. To live over 
again the school drama, the pennant 
winning baseball game, the junior 
debate, or to recall the pretty poetic 
fancy which still shines a beacon 
light to your own better thoughts, 
these lived over again in later days 
make daily tasks less drudgery and 
restore youthful smiles to care-drawn 
faces. These after all are the most 
practical things. We need training 
for our avocations, our vacant hours, 
quite as much as for our vocations. 

The High School Pro- 
motes Health 

To the majority of young people 
a high school is more beneficial to 
health than a sanatorium. High 
school hfe is buoyant and inspiring. 
There is no time for morbid intros- 
pection. Only occasionally is there 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



an exception. Graduates of high 
school entering the army are far 
above the average enhstment in 
physical perfection. Physical ed- 
ucation, a pride in correct carriage 
and proper breathing, a knowledge 
of the simple rules of health and 
hygiene all tend toward making the 
high school course a good guarantee 
to better health in its graduates. 
Observe the straightened shoulders, 
the improved carriage, the better 
poise, the lung capacity of the aver- 
age high school graduate compared 
with the boy or girl who went to 
work in the shop at fourteen, and 
you will be convinced of the worth 
of a high school course from the 
standpoint of health. 

It Will Pay In Dollars and Cents 

The best financial investment you 
can possibly make at fourteen is 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



going to high school. It will pay you 
and pay you liberally in increased 
earning power. If you know a safe 
investment, if you can recognize a 
genuine bargain, if you can even 
begin to reason on finance, it is easy 
to prove to you that going to high 
school is the best investment you 
can make. The following figures are 
vouched for by the United States 
Bureau of Education. They are 
based upon the investigation of the 
earning power of a number of boys 
from various school classes at the 
age of twenty-five. At that age the 
boys who went to work at fourteen 
were earning on the average $12.75 
per week. The boys of these same 
classes who took a high school course 
were earning at the age of twenty- 
five $31.00 per week. 



Does It Pay? 

We estimate forty years as the 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



earning period of a man's life, that 
is, from the time he is twenty until 
he is sixty years old. Let us assume 
that the earning power remains ab- 
solutely the same after the age of 
twenty-five, and then counting fifty 
weeks to the year, the average boy 
that goes to work at fourteen will 
earn $25,500 in a Hfe time. The 
average boy with a high school ed- 
ucation will earn $62,000 in the same 
length of time. The time spent in 
securing a high school education is 
forty months. Forty months of 
high school study, then, will increase 
the earning power of an average boy 
$36,000. If you are a boy of average 
ability a high school course is worth 
$45.00 per day or $900.00 per month 
to you while you are going to high 
school. 

Does It Pay? 

In this investigation of hundreds 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



of boys, those who had gone through 
high school were earning by the time 
they were twenty-five years old 
$900.00 more per year than the boys 
who went to work at fourteen. If 
this increased earning power were 
capitaHzed at 5 per cent it would be 
equal to a working capital of $18,000 
invested in their business. 

Does It Pay? 

The boys who went to work when 
they were fourteen had earned in all 
by the time they were twenty-five 
only $5,112.50, while those who had 
taken a high school course had earn- 
ed by the same time $7,337.50. 
These boys who had spent four 
years in high school study earned 
over $2,000 more each by the time 
they were twenty-five than the 
boys who began to earn money four 
years sooner. 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



Does It Pay? 

These figures are as authentic as 
any that have been compiled. Fig- 
ures for girls will show shght variation 
but the same ratio of earning power. 
You and your parents should ponder 
these figures well before you deter- 
mi ne to leave school at fourteen . For 
a solid financial investment you can 
neither equal nor excel a high school 
education. 

Objections Sometimes Heard 

Here are some of the objections 
offered to a high school course. 

1. It costs too much. The cost will 
vary in different cities. As a rule it 
need not cost much more to go to 
high school than to stay at home. 
Board will cost the same. Clothing 
will cost little more. Books should 
not cost more than a dollar a month. 
Incidentals will cost just what you 



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WILL IT PAY ME 



make them. The larger your inci- 
dental expense above a small mini- 
mum, the poorer your high school 
work. Ask your high school prin- 
cipal if this is not true. Every high 
school boy and girl should earn every 
cent of the cost of a high school course 
except board and clothes, and many 
should help in the cost of these. Too 
much money furnished by a doting 
mother or an indulgent father has 
ruined more pupils than ever a high 
school itself has spoiled. The best 
pupils are rarely the most liberal 
spenders. Fathers and mothers who 
blame the high school for failures 
will usually find it, instead, in their 
own too liberal allowance of money. 

2. Must work to help support the 
family. This is sometimes a worthy 
reason, but nine times out of ten it is 
only an excuse. The child is some times 
thought of like a young colt — it must 



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TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



earn its board and keep. If you want 
a good horse beware of working the 
colt too early. Better by far leave 
your boy or girl penniless at your 
death, but with a high school edu- 
cation, than to leave them with 
thousands and without an education. 
Go back and read again the money 
value of an education. 

3. Pupils quit high school be- 
cause they dislike one or more 
of the high school teachers. This 
is as foohsh as for a carpenter to 
quit his trade because he must work 
for a while under a foreman whom he 
does not Hke, or for an engineer to 
quit railroading because he does not 
like the conductor. In every such 
case, you "Cut off your nose to spite 
your face." 

4. Many high school pupils quit 
because they fail in one or more sub- 
jects. You will meet failures in every 



WILL IT PAY ME 



walk of life. The sensible thing is to 
take the subject over again. It may 
be the thing that will do you most 
good. It would be a real poor sales- 
man who quit the first time he failed 
to land a prospect. Quitting high 
school because you fail in some sub- 
ject is apt to show a fatal weakness 
in you — that of being a quitter, 
quitting any time, anywhere, unless 
things are to your Hking. 

5. Sickness or other misfortune 
makes you lose time. It is dis- 
couraging, it is true, to drop back 
to a strange class and with younger 
students. You will meet far worse 
discouragements often in life. If you 
think of it in the right light it is as 
absurd as to refuse to go in swimming 
or to play a game unless you could 
be with those with whom you learned. 

6. A good job tempts you to quit. 
This is one of the most fatal mistakes. 
It is the great danger of working a 



M 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



few years before you start to high 
school. To have your own spending 
money tempts you to continue to 
work. There will always be jobs. 
There will be jobs next year and the 
next. There will be jobs after you 
are dead and gone. You can get a 
job any time, but you will never have 
more than one chance to get a high 
school education, and that chance is 
now. One of the most keenly dis- 
appointed young men I have ever 
known quit high school at the end of 
his sophomore year to take what 
seemed a good job. Two years later 
the firm failed. A year afterward 
the greatest opportunity of a life- 
time came to him. It was a chance 
for honor and distinction in a line 
which he very much coveted. He 
received the appointment, but failed 
in the examination because of lack of 
training. Opportunity will knock at 
your door, but cannot enter unless 
you are prepared. 

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WILL IT PAY ME 



7. It takes too long to complete a 
course. Your four years in high 
school will seem the shortest of your 
life. What seems a long time now 
will glide by like a summer outing. 
Your regret later will be that you 
cannot prolong the years. The short 
cut business college has its place and 
often does a splendid service. Like 
a quick lunch counter it serves for 
emergencies only. You can't mature 
corn in three weeks. You cannot 
develop and train intellectual powers 
in three months. Time and effort 
are both essential to a well developed 
mind. A squash can be raised in a 
season, but it takes an oak a century 
to mature. You get out of a school 
course in proportion to the time and 
energy you put into it. When you 
grow to maturity your regret will be 
that you did not spend more time in 
high school rather than less. 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



Bewailing Your Fate Later 

Just now the future lies before you. 
Just now you are master of your own 
fate in regard to going to high school. 
If you fail to grasp this opportunity 
now, wailing ten years from now will 
not avail. Regrets for neglected 
opportunities do not pay cash div- 
idends. Now and not later is seeding 
time. As you sow, you will reap. 
I have often heard bitter regrets from 
young people who had the chance for 
high school and refused it. Urge your 
father and mother to give you a 
boost toward a better preparation 
for life. If you are a boy or girl of 
only average ability it will pay you 
in increased earning power and in- 
creased living power. 

Your high school course will open 
new worlds of thought to you. It 
will open to you a bigger, brighter, 
better future, just as much broader 



27 



WILL IT PAY ME 



and just as much better as your pres- 
ent vision and knowledge and judg- 
ment is better than your fourth 
grade. You will learn how to meet 
and mingle with young men and 
young women. You will discover 
yourself, your powers, your possi- 
bihties, and your proper ambitions. 
This is the greatest discovery that 
any one can make. To understand 
yourself, your abilities and your 
limitations, this points out to you 
the high road to success. 

In high school you will meet a 
faculty of college bred young men 
and women of high ideals and lofty 
motives. To know some of these 
intimately as teachers is a priceless 
possession. Some of these may be to 
you what Mark Hopkins was to 
Garfield. Some high school associate 
will be to you like Copperfield's 
Agnes, constantly pointing upward. 
Nowhere else are you so apt to find, 



TO GO TO HIGH SCHOOL 



as in high school, a friend who will 
teach you to hft your head above the 
clouds while you keep your feet 
firmly on the earth. 

Your supreme test is at hand. 
Will you slink like a slacker, or will 
you go over the top like a man'^ 



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